Thursday, March 19, 2009

IMF CREATED IRAQ RIOTS

The World Bank requested all stimulus bills passed, allocate 7% of said monies, to developing countries. I suggested that some questions be addressed first, in order to further understand how theses monies would be utilized.

This report, will explore the IMFs involvement in Iraq, and the subsequent riots that ensued. In December 2005 the IMF issued a 685 million dollar loan to Iraq. Extortion soon followed (The Progressive below)

In December, the International Monetary Fund, in exchange for giving a loan of $685 million to the Iraqi government, insisted that the Iraqis lift subsidies on the price of oil and open the economy to more private investment.

As the IMF said in a press release of December 23, the Iraqi government must be committed to “controlling the wage and pensions bill, reducing subsidies on petroleum products, and expanding the participation of the private sector in the domestic market for petroleum products.”

The impact of the IMF extortion was swift and brutal.

The ultimate result was a price hike on gasoline from around 5 cents per gallon to around 65 cents per gallon.

Not surprisingly, these enormous price hikes have led to riots around the country, with police firing on 3,000 protesters in Nassiryeh, according to an account on Daily Kos. www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/20/11119/029,

Both, the World Bank and the IMF, have been accused of economic terror acts, which come by the way of "loans". When countries accept these needed loans: for roads, schools, utilities; can not afford to pay them back, natural resources vital to a "developing country" are then taken. These same resources,if utilized properly, are the very things needed to provide economic security to such an impoverished country. Instead, we see the resources plundered by a "supposed" benign International group, that was created under the pretense of assisting countries in economic distress. It is my intent to report further on such stories.